If the Middle East Didn’t Have the Capability of Killing us all. . .

January 31, 2011

I had an inkling of this thought when the protests turned into looting, but, let’s face it. I said Mubarak is toast. So, this would be a 180 degree reversal.

The longer Mubarak takes to move and the longer the tourists stay away and the more the people think through ElBaradei’s deal with the Brotherhood, the more Mubarak looks good in camparison.

Bret Stephens casts Mubarak as a Taoist genious. Do nothing and yet nothing is undone. Stronly repress and protests prop up somewhere else and you may run out of people willing to do it. Step down and you wind up in some people’s court some where or under virtual house arrest in Saudi Arabia.

But do nothing, let the protesters wear on the shopkeepers; Let the people contemplate life under the Brotherhood. Then they’ll come back to daddy willingly, and they won’t be in this mood again for a long, loing time.

Maybe, it plays out. Maybe it doesn’t, but I really feel like I’m getting the benefit of an entire government course every day.

The one thing I don’t get is that every correspondent I read says how respected and powerful (relative to the rest of Egyptian society) the Egyptian Army is. And yet some I speak with who have been to the country tell a different story.